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Sunday, 25 August 2013

When my friend D sent me the menu for the Makansutra August 2013 Makan Session, I literally drooled on my keyboard. You see, at heart, I am an old-fashioned Chinese gourmand. This menu simply couldn't set a foot wrong: suckling pig, shark fin soup, abalone, venison, chilli crab and the customary mystery "dessert". All for the measly price of S$50 nett, all corkage charges waived. The only downside was that the venue, Ah Yat Seafood Restaurant, was located at The Grandstand, up in the wilds near Upper Bukit Timah Road.

Some things are too good to be true, and it can be a disappointing experience when the penny finally drops.

Saturday, 17 August 2013

I love Pamplemousse. Correction, I loved Pamplemousse. This unassuming eatery, featuring very well thought-through Franco-Asian "bistro" dishes from Adrian Ling, closed its shutters for the last time on 9 June 2013. But with the class that marks much of what Ling and his wife / restaurant manager Cleo Chiang do, Pamplemousse donated all the proceeds of its valedictory dinner to a local children's charity.But Ling and Chiang bounced back this week, reopening on the old Pamplemousse space with a brave concept: a more casual room serving Asian-inspired, especially Singaporean / Malaysian-influenced, sharing plates (Ling and Chiang are wary of the word "tapas"). And as its cuisine is an amalgam of various influences and experiences, Pidgin, meaning a simplified language with influence from multiple languages, is a delightfully appropriate name.

Saturday, 3 August 2013

An updated review of Julien Royer's Jaan in 2014 is here.I recently returned to Jaan, the fine dining restaurant at the top floor of the Swissotel the Stamford, for the first time since André Chiang's departure. I could say a lot about the multiple courses presented by Auvergnat-born chef de cuisine Julien Royer, but in the interests of brevity, I can summarise my thoughts in a sentence: very good, but there is a definite sense that Royer is, surely but still in the process of, finding his voice.